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In light of the Kyoto Treaty recently having come into force, and all of the scientific evidence for global warming, I was reminded of two seemingly unconnected events from 1977. The first was the screening an Anglia TV documentary, in June of that year, called Alternative 3. And the second was a strange incident from that November which occurred in the South of England. But I’ll deal with the last one first as I had personal experience of it.
That
November afternoon I was watching the local TV news programme when the broadcasting
company for Southern England was taken over by unknown people who delivered
a most unusual message that purportedly came from outer space. It began at around
5:10 p.m. on 26th November 1977 and was transmitted, via five different aerials,
for about five and a half minutes.
The Independent Broadcasting Authority detected
none of the interference; nor did any of the engineers hear it. Viewers in the
area bordered by London, Oxford, Reading, Newbury, Andover, Southampton, and
Winchester, all received the broadcast. The text can still be read on the net,
and here is what it said:
http://www.cyberspaceorbit.com/takeoverstar.html
This is the voice of GRAMAHA, the representative of the Asta Galactic Command, speaking to you. For many years now you have seen us as lights in the skies. We speak to you now in peace and wisdom as we have done to your brothers and sisters all over this, your planet earth.
We come to warn you of the destiny of your race and your worlds so that you may communicate to your fellow beings the course you must take to avoid the disasters which threaten your worlds, and the beings on our worlds around you. This is in order that you may share in the great awakening, as the planet passes into the new Age of Aquarius. The new age can be a time of great peace and evolution for your race, but only if your rulers are made aware of the evil forces that overshadow their judgments.
Be still now and listen, for your chance may not come again. For many years your scientists, governments and generals have not heeded our warnings; they have continued to experiment with the evil forces of what you call nuclear energy. Atomic bombs can destroy the earth, and the beings of your sister worlds, in a moment. The wastes from atomic power systems will poison your planet for many thousands of your years to come.
We, who have followed the path of evolution for far longer than you, have long since realized this - that atomic energy is always directed against life. It has had no peaceful application. Its use, and research into its use, must be ceased at once, or you all risk destruction. All weapons of evil must be removed.
The time of conflict is now past. The race of which you are a part may proceed to the highest planes of evolution if you show yourselves worthy to do this. You have but a short time to learn to live together in peace and goodwill. "Small groups all over the planet are learning this, and exist to pass on the light of the dawning new age to you all. You are free to accept or reject their teachings, but only those who learn to live in peace will pass to the higher realms of spiritual evolution.
Hear now the voice of GRAMAHA, the representative of the Asta Galactic Command, speaking to you. Be aware also that there are many false prophets and guides operating in your world. They will suck the energy from you - the energy you call money and will put it to evil ends giving you worthless dross in return.
Your inner divine self will protect you from this. You must learn to be sensitive to the voice within that can tell you what is truth, and what is confusion, chaos and untruth. Learn to listen to the voice of truth which is within you and you will lead yourselves on to the path of evolution.
This is our message to our dear friends. We have watched you growing for many years as you too have watched our lights in your skies. You know now that we are here, and that there are more beings on and around your earth than your scientists admit.
We are deeply concerned about you and your path towards the light and will do all we can to help you. Have no fear, seek only to know yourselves, and live in harmony with the ways of your planet earth. We of the Asta Galactic Command thank you for your attention. We are now leaving the planes of your existence. May you be blessed by the supreme love and truth of the cosmos.
At
the time we all thought it might have been a student prank, and the police had
told the press that they had taken that idea seriously. However, nobody was caught,
and nobody owned up to having done it. One interesting aside is that the area
in which the broadcast was heard has at least two or three nuclear installations
- the AWRE (Atomic Weapons Research Establishment) at Aldermaston, the power station at Didcot, and the Rutherford laboratories at Oxford. And, having thought
about it since, had it been a real extraterrestrial message why was it only heard in a very small part of the UK and not on a national or worldwide scale?
Another suggestion that seems to point towards it being a hoax was pointed out to me by a friend, who states:
... it mentions moving into the Age of Aquarius - a concept strongly rooted in new age thought in the 60s, 70s, even 80s. Nowadays all you hear about is Ascension instead, though I think the change in ages is still in process. It also speaks of evil nuclear weapons and poison atomic waste. I've heard it said that ETs have the technology to remove pollution and probably neutralize radiation. In any case though it smacks of intervention, which I don't think they would do in a mass way, only on an individual basis through consciousness raising but not thru trying to dictate some particular course of action. That's how us humans think and act!
And I have to say that I would agree with that idea. Also, from my own memory, (which may have lapsed with time), there was just a blank screen while the message was being heard. How strange that an advanced civilization could interrupt the programming but wasn’t able to bring us pictures as well as sound!
The other strange event from that year was in June 1977 when Anglia TV broadcast a programme called Alternative 3 as part of their science strand. It was supposedly to have been transmitted on 1st April as an April Fool Joke, but was actually held over another couple of months so that it could be simultaneously shown in not only the UK but also Australia, Canada, Finland, Greece, Iceland, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, and Yugoslavia. However, whether that is in fact true I wasn’t able to substantiate, especially as Yugoslavia was still under the yoke of Tito at that time. But what is certain is that it was never shown in the USA. After it was seen here in the UK there was outrage amongst the viewers.
Back at that period of British history it was well known that many of the UK’s most eminent scientists were leaving England to go and work in America, and this became known as the Brain Drain. The public believed that it was due to better pay, better conditions, and better facilities being found abroad. At the same time the press was also full of stories about scientists of one type or another that were either committing suicide or dying in very mysterious circumstances.
The writers of the programme were David Ambrose, Christopher Miles, and Leslie Watkins. And the name of one of the protagonists in the cast list was Bob Grodin, supposedly a pseudonym for a real American astronaut. The basic premise of the storyline was that global warming would make Earth uninhabitable; that there had been a landing on Mars in early 1962; that there was other intelligent life in the universe; and that secret bases had been built on both Mars and the Moon. It then went on to relate how some of the best physicists, chemists, and biologists, had been given jobs abroad only to vanish from the face of the Earth. They had been spirited away to off-planet secret bases in a conspiracy perpetrated by the collusion of the UK, USA, and Russian governments. Meanwhile ‘ordinary’ people were also disappearing, and these had been sent to the Moon to act as slave labour for the scientists that were now living on Mars.
Was there any truth behind this? Well, according to one report, the Jason Society held a conference in 1957 at which eminent scientists had stated their belief the world would self-destruct around the year 2,000. They thought this would be the outcome of overpopulation and environmental degradation. Therefore three recommendations were made, known as Alternatives 1, 2, and 3:
Alternative 1 was to end all pollution, and blast two large holes in the ozone layer to allow so much ultra-violet light to reach earth that the population would die off due to skin cancer.
Alternative 2 was to dig underground cities for the privileged and influential to move into, and leave the poor and uneducated to die on the surface.
Alternative 3 was the build spaceships to take the upper echelons of society to the Moon and Mars; again leaving the rest to die.
When the programme was over and callers began to swamp the Anglia TV switchboards they were told it was a hoax, postponed from 1st April, and that all the people on the screen had been actors. The press also treated it in the same vein, even comparing it to the Orson Well’s War of the Worlds radio play in the 1930s.
However,
that isn’t the end of the story. The following year a book was written by Leslie Watkins, (already a writer of thriller books), entitled Alternative 3. Both David Ambrose and Christopher Miles were credited with co- authorship
because, although they didn’t write the book, they had written the TV
programme, so they were added for copyright reasons. The purpose of the book
was to expand on the topics covered in the original TV broadcast, but again
it was not intended to be read as factual. These days it isn’t easy to buy
a copy but it is still available from Amazon in the UK:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/
And a great deal of the text can be found here:
http://ufos.about.com/library/weekly/aa050399.htm
Scroll to the end of the page and you can then download it in four separate parts:
Alternative
3, Part 1
Alternative
3, Part 2
Alternative
3, Part 3
Alternative
3, Part 4
All of those involved with the TV programme claimed that it was fiction. Nevertheless, the real issue is whether any of it was based on fact. In the book Alien Agenda by Jim Marrs some of Leslie Watkins’ correspondence on the subject is quoted, and this is what he had to say (p. 259):
"This original TV version, which I expanded immensely for the book, was actually a hoax which had been scheduled for transmission on April Fool’s Day. Because of certain problems in finding the right network slot, the transmission was delayed." Continuing with his letter, Watkins wrote, "I initially took the view that the basic premise was so way-out …. That no one would regard it as non fiction. Immediately after publication, I realized I was totally wrong. In fact the amazing mountains of letters from virtually all parts of the world – including vast numbers from highly intelligent people in positions of authority – convinced me that I had accidentally trespassed into a range of top-secret truths …. So, summing up, the book is fiction based on fact. But I now feel that I inadvertently got very close to a secret truth."
Marrs also quotes Linda Moulton Howe on the subject; in which she says (p. 260):
"I was curious, and I had a discussion with a BBC producer about it. I was told that the programme began as a BBC documentary on the so-called British ‘brain drain’ of the 1970s. You might remember that a large number of British scientists were leaving, reportedly for better-paying jobs in America. I was told that the programme never came off because the BBC could not locate any of the scientists once they left Britain. It was all very odd. It was like they disappeared."
However,
according to an interview in the Fortean Times, with one of the books commissioning
editors of Sphere Books, the publishers of the book, the whole thing –
TV programme and book – were a hoax. You can read the interview here:
http://www.forteantimes.com/articles/121_a3.shtml
Another
very well-known writer, William (Bill) Cooper, (who died in extremely mysterious circumstances), also used the ideas of Alternative 3 in many of his conspiracy
theories, especially in his book Behold a Pale Horse. You can read some of the excerpts here:
http://www.maths.qmw.ac.uk/~ade/sldocs/secretgovt.html
Inclduing the following:
You should also know that Bob Grodin is a friend of Leslie Watkins, and it is Bob Grodin's name that Watkins uses as the alias of the astronaut cited in Alternative 003:
………… Alternative 3 is a reality. It is not science fiction. ………… "Bob Grodin" was used in place of the astronaut's identity. (The real Bob Grodin is a friend of Leslie Watkins and is a part of the Kennedy assassination cover-up.) It was also stated that the astronaut committed suicide in 1978. This cannot be validated by any source, and I believe that several so called facts in the book are really disinformation. I firmly believe that this disinformation is a result of pressure put upon the authors and is meant to nullify the effect upon the populace of the British TV exposé "Alternative 3." ………. I can say that the book Alternative 003 is at least 70% true from my own knowledge and the knowledge of my sources. I believe that the disinformation was an attempt to compromise the British TV exposé with information that could be proven false, just as the "Eisenhower Briefing Document," which was released here in the United States under the contingency plan Majestic Twelve, can also be proven false.
For a more in-depth look at what might lie behind Alternative 3 there is a very good article that includes the following quote:
All men who have travelled to the Moon have given indications of knowing about Alternative 3 and of the reasons which precipitated it.
The whole of it can be read here:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/ufo/alt-3.htm
So what are we to make of Alternative 3 – fact or fiction? Well, perhaps we should leave the last word to the author, Leslie Watkins. In the book entitled The Lost Journals of Nikola Tesla by Tim Swartz, Leslie Watkins is quoted as saying, (p.119):
Documentary evidence provided by many of these correspondents decided me to write a serious and completely non-fiction sequel. Unfortunately, a chest containing the bulk of the letters was among the items which were mysteriously lost in transit some four years ago when I moved from London, England, to Sydney, Australia, before I moved on to settle in New Zealand. For some time after Alternative 3 was originally published, I have reason to suppose that my home telephone was being tapped and my contacts who were experienced in such matters were convinced that certain intelligence agencies considered that I probably knew too much.
The TV programme and the book are now around thirty years old, and yet the controversy surrounding them still persists. They seem to have burrowed deep into the British psyche for those who either saw the show or read the book. Will the mystery ever be solved? Somehow I very much doubt it, and the two sides of the argument, fact or fiction, will remain entrenched unless, one day, we really do get Disclosure.